Monday, November 12, 2007

Free Web Research Tools

www.marketresearch.com – Many people are turned off by the cost of the market research reports available for purchase on this website. However, key statistics, lists of companies, diseases, and drugs can be gathered from the freely available abstract and table of contents of these reports. Also, specific chapters, tables, or figures from reports are often available at a much lower cost directly from marketresearch.com. They will even check to see if specific information is in that section before the purchase is made, to ensure that the money is well spent.

www.patentlens.net – A relatively new patent database, Patent Lens is being provided by CAMBIA (www.cambia.org), a non-profit organization in Australia. The free database allows simultaneous searching of US, European, and Australian patents and patent applications. The advanced search is very powerful, and the results are linked directly to the full text of the patents, where available.

fda.minesoft.net – The FDA Orange book is freely available on the web, but can be difficult to search. Minesoft uses the FDA data to create an easily searchable database of drugs, including approval dates, expiration dates, and exclusivity information. The records also include direct links to the relevant patents, where available.